It’s safe to say it’s been a bad year for the Alabama Crimson Tide athletic program after the university got some unwanted negative attention from the Darius Miles murder trial to the recent Alabama men’s baseball gambling scandal. And it sounds like the bad press has Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne a little concerned.
This week, Byrne revealed that he spoke to head football coach Nick Saban about the “challenges” the athletic program has faced that has resulted in some bad press. Byrne seems upset that the media is focused on the scandals instead of the highlights of the program.
“There’s multiple things you have to talk to your staff about. Yesterday we had an all-staff meeting. We usually do a couple of those a year. We had an extra one,” Byrne told AL.com, according to On3. “What we talked about, and actually Coach Saban and I were talking, Coach and I talk regularly about different issues within Alabama athletics. Challenges. We talk about different challenges within college sports. He addressed the staff. I addressed the staff. We talked about this year, we have just last weekend graduated 83 student-athletes. Our APR numbers are as strong as anybody out there. We have over 2,000 hours of community service. We just had two of the top three picks in the NFL Draft. We’re No. 7 in the Director’s Cup. We’re the top SEC program, from an athletic standpoint.
“Unfortunately, those things aren’t getting highlighted right now. We’re proud of that. We’ve got an incredible group of young men and young women in our department, who are doing a really good job of representing the University of Alabama.”
Byrne may be upset about it, but it’s not exactly surprising that a murder investigation and a gambling scandal would overshadow any of these things.
[On3]
